Wordpress is a little more flexible, both in terms of customizing and theming, and also from an administrative perspective, since you can easily integrate Wordpress on an existing site or host a Wordpress blog from your own server. However, it's a little more involved. I would go with Blogger (aka blogspot) (now owned by Google); it's really simple, intuitive, and easy to use.

But for my money, the best blogging platform is the one I authored both as a fun project and also as a tool I could use to put a blog on my personal website

From a reader's perspective:

The platform does not matter as much as 1) the quality of content and 2) a good theme (selection of fonts, colors, etc.) that makes reading easy!

I use Wordpress, and I'm generally satisfied. I didn't research very much before making my choice. There are a lot of tools, which is useful, but sometimes it takes me a while to figure out how to do something. One can get a lot further down that rabbit hole than I am--I use the free web interface, and I only recently realized that you can get an installed interface that has more capability, but requires a paid hosting setup. An erstwhile tea drinker and programmer I know has all kinds of vitriol to spew about the jury-rigged nature of the Wordpress system, but 1) I don't know enough about programming to put his comments in perspective and 2) there have been occasions where he turns out to know a lot less about something than I thought he did. My hunch is he's never tried to do anything in Wordpress, but maybe he was asked to port something from Wordpress to a different platform in which he is more fluent, like HTML or Ruby or something.

I used to use wordpress and was happy with it. Recently though, in an effort to save money (I doubt anyone reads my blog anyway), I set up a free google site as a blog and I have been able to reproduce most of the functionality I had at wordpress.

IzzieBot wrote:tumblr and blogger or both great options as well - the latter lets you use ads whereas wordpress.com does not (if you use them as a free host vs hosting it on your own server).

There is some kind of program now where you can host ads on wordpress blogs and get some of the revenue, but since I decided against doing that, I didn't look into it too closely. Other than that, they MIGHT put ads on your site--I think it has to do with how much traffic you get and if you are paying for any other upgrades--so you can pay a reasonable fee to ENSURE there are no ads.

toasterburn wrote:I used to use wordpress and was happy with it. Recently though, in an effort to save money (I doubt anyone reads my blog anyway), I set up a free google site as a blog and I have been able to reproduce most of the functionality I had at wordpress.

Google products continue to get better with time. I'm not at all surprised that you came very close to a similar experience. I really want them to go in and clean up blogger a bit. Already the new dashboard has gotten a solid makeover. I shamelessly love that company.

Evan Draper wrote:

IzzieBot wrote:tumblr and blogger or both great options as well - the latter lets you use ads whereas wordpress.com does not (if you use them as a free host vs hosting it on your own server).

There is some kind of program now where you can host ads on wordpress blogs and get some of the revenue, but since I decided against doing that, I didn't look into it too closely. Other than that, they MIGHT put ads on your site--I think it has to do with how much traffic you get and if you are paying for any other upgrades--so you can pay a reasonable fee to ENSURE there are no ads.

I see. I remember back in 2010 when I started blogging, I chose blogger over wordpress.com (before I had my own host) specifically so I could use ads.

I'm curious as to your decision not to use them?

I was ad-free for a very long time once I set up my own hosted blogs, but recently threw a few AdSense spots on my blogs just to see how it goes. I feel like people using ads on their sites get a lot of flack for that decision but I feel like as long as they are unobtrusive it's reasonable.

I didn't need anything too flashy and I hated paying hosting fees, so I'm happy with the result. Of course, you would need to be fairly comfortable tweaking things until you like them aesthetically. The standard templates are pretty bland compared to some other options, but there is a lot of room for customization.

I've been using Blogger for five years now and have been very happy with it. The new (optional) integration with Google Plus is a great advantage to consider as well. I find that I have more interaction and am finding new readers on a more regular basis.